League Cup: Morton clinch stunning win over Celtic

A DRAMATIC injury-time penalty by Dougie Imrie gave Morton a shock 1-0 Scottish League Cup third-round win over Celtic at Parkhead last night.

Five minutes into the extra period after a stalemate during normal time, the Morton player scored from the spot after referee Bobby Madden adjudged Celtic defender Efe Ambrose to have handled when challenging substitute Archie Campbell.

Celtic, who had been lacklustre for most of the game, pounded the Morton goal in an attempt to get back level and Charlie Mulgrew hit the post in the dying seconds.

However, on night of unlikely drama, the resolute visitors were not to be denied.

With the top tier of the stadium closed and the rest of the ground far from full, the first half was pretty uneventful not to say uninspiring.

Mulgrew, playing at left-back in a reshuffled Celtic side, came closest to scoring with a free-kick which was tipped away for a corner by Ton’s French goalkeeper, Nicolas Caraux.

However, Morton, second-bottom of the Scottish Championship, defended stoutly for the rest of the 90 minutes without offering much of a threat in attack but Imrie’s penalty was all they needed.

Celtic manager Neil Lennon had noted beforehand that he had not yet won this trophy as a manager and he will have to wait at least another year. The defeat also put an end to any hopes of Celtic winning a treble this season.

In the other third-round ties played last night, the three Scottish Premiership sides made comfortable progress.

Liam Craig completed his first-ever hat-trick as Hibernian clinched a quarter-final slot with a 5-3 win over Stranraer at Easter Road. Hibs’ summer recruit Abdellah Zoubir also found the net and Stranraer’s Scott Rumsby scored an own goal. Stranraer got on the scoresheet thanks to Chris Aitken and a Michael Nelson own goal.

At Dens Park, Billy McKay netted his seventh goal of the season to give Inverness Caledonian Thistle a 1-0 win over Dundee. But Terry Butcher did not believe his team deserved the win.

“If we go play like that against Hibs on Saturday we will be turned over,” said Butcher. “Fair play to Dundee – they deserve to go through and not us. They bossed the game. I told Bomber [Brown] that his side were excellent and deserved to go through.”

At New Douglas Park, St Johnstone beat Hamilton Accies 3-0.

Stevie May returned to haunt his former club as he scored a double, while Gwion Edwards came off the bench to claim his first goal for the club.

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

The Scotsman provides news, events and sport features from the Edinburgh area. For the best up to date information relating to Edinburgh and the surrounding areas visit us at The Scotsman regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website The Scotsman requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.